Today: Mar 28, 2024

Carry the Love brings students together

Abby EpsteinNews Writer

Through an upbeat atmosphere with music and praying, Carry the Love preached to students about how they could love one another like Jesus.

Carry the Love is a campaign that started in 2014 and is currently on tour in the United States and Europe visiting 300 campuses.

The people running the Carry the Love event are known as circuit riders, a branch off of an organization called Youth with a Mission that specializes with college campuses. YWAM is the largest mission organization in the world.

“We go to college campuses and host big gospel events, but our call and our goal are to really train and equip students to do what we are doing,” said circuit rider Carly Schut. “We really want to catalyze movement on campuses.”

Though the event on Southern featured a small group of people in previous years, it has grown each year it has come Southern’s campus. This year, Carry the Love booked the entire ballroom in the student center.

“This is my third Carry the Love, but freshman year we were in the student center Room 217 which is a tiny student involvement room and there weren’t that many people there,” said nursing major Kyley Fiondella, a senior.

Fiondella said she believes that Southern’s open minded community is responsible for the event’s growth.

“I think this just shows how much God is moving on this campus, how many people are responding to Him and Southern is such a more open campus then you would think. It is and it’s been so great to just watch this movement grow,” said Fiondella.

The event included a band that performed songs about Jesus, while the circuit riders were going around and praying for different students and people came up to preach.

“It was so much more than I expected it to be. I was expecting less people — not as crazy — but it was a lot of fun with a lot of loud music,” said physical education major Lauren Ross, a freshman.

Students like psychology major Monae Perrier, a sophomore, who have gone for multiple years, that they have become more involved with the event and students who attended this event for the first time said they plan on coming back next year.

“Since last year I was new to it, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, so I was standing in the back observing, but this year I got more involved with the worship,” said Perrier.

Many of the circuit riders joined Carry the Love because it came to their own college campus.

“They came to my campus, Salisbury University, last year and when they left, I just got so inspired and was like I want to do this,” said circuit rider Geno Lowe.

Southern Alumni Alexa Luft, who is now a Carry the Love tour leader, started by attending the event.

“It was just so inspiring. It inspired me to pursue a mission lifestyle. As I was at the event, I learned what is was like to be someone who preaches the gospel,” said Luft.

Carry the Love has a school out in Huntington Beach, California. This is where the circuit riders learn how to express the message of loving Jesus. “You come into a school and get training about how to go about and preach the gospel,” said Schut. Carry the Love will be back on campus for night two of worship where they split up the women and men and read over parts of the Bible and discuss what it means.

“I love Carry the Love because it is basically a giant permission slip to our generation to go and live the lifestyle of Jesus,” said Luft, “to follow to Jesus and actually see a culture shift on college in this generation on college campuses.” 

Photo Credit: Roma Rositani

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